On a coffee table in their sitting room stood two cups of cold coffee and the remains of two cream cakes - all that was left of the snack they abandoned last night when a neighbour hammered on their door and told them they had to get out.

Stephen then hammered on the door of a house to get help and an elderly man let him in and comforted him for half-an-hour before he walked for five minutes up the road to his home.

Both Mr Noble and Mr Roper then hammered on the room doors along the corridor to rouse other guests before dashing upstairs to wake people on the top floor.

Origin

Old English hamor has a Germanic origin, related to German Hammer, and Old Norse hamarr ‘rock, crag’. The original sense was probably ‘stone tool or weapon’. The expression hammer and tongs (early 18th century) meaning ‘with energy and speed’ comes from the blacksmith showering blows on the iron taken by the help of tongs from the fire.

Phrases

come (or go) under the hammer

A photograph of Edward VIII taken during his notorious meeting with Adolf Hitler failed to sell at auction yesterday when it went under the hammer as part of a collection of private papers which belonged to his aide.

Two previously unheard recordings by John Lennon were sold for €216,000 yesterday when they went under the hammer at an auction of pop memorabilia.

hammer something home

Phrasal verbs

hammer something out

But the conditions are that the guerrillas call a ceasefire and cessation of hostilities - a non-starter as the rebels have always said a ceasefire could only be called after the details of a peace agreement had been hammered out.

Now, sources say that votes could come as early as next Wednesday in the House and Thursday in the Senate, when all the details are hammered out.

In the end, there was too much opposition from business and development interests, so the CIR was put on hold while the superstore plan was hammered out.

Derivatives

hammerless

The shift from pins to hammerless equipment improved the sustainability of a finite resource - some cracks were becoming nothing more than a series of pin scars - and, consequently, improved the sustainability of the sport itself.

‘We have taken the striker-fired hammerless slide and barrel portion prevalent in our European competitors and integrated them into the 1911 handset,’ said Brent Mounts of Alchemy Arms.

The double-barrel shotgun, preferably the hammerless kind that ‘on-safes’ itself each time the action is opened, has served the same function on the shotgun side for decades.